


I’d Be Able to Tell if He Was Lying

by Hey_its_Jess



Category: Good Omens, Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Book compliant, Canon Compliant, M/M, Not Beta Read, we die as men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-09 04:27:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20496311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hey_its_Jess/pseuds/Hey_its_Jess
Summary: "If she had asked she would have learned that Aziraphale felt betrayed. He was angry. He was cursing Crowley, and the ineffable plan, and Above, and Below. It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way."In which Azirphale finds a scorch mark and a puddle of...something...in Crowley's office and makes assumptions.





	I’d Be Able to Tell if He Was Lying

**Author's Note:**

> I know the trope of Aziraphale finding the puddle that used to be Ligur and thinking it's Crowley has been done before (I've read them all), but something always felt off to me. So, I decided to try my hand at writing it myself. It's been over two years since I've truly tried to write something. Plus, the idea hasn't left me alone in weeks.
> 
> This is set primarily in book canon since it's the only place that it would theoretically fit and make sense. So, I attempted to mimic the book's style and the Aziraphale's characterization from there. There are one or two show canon events mentioned. If you haven't read the book, Aziraphale doesn't talk to Crowley before finding a body. They meet at the airfield, with Crowley figuring out what to do by finding Aziraphale's notes in Agnes's book after leaving the burning bookshop. I added a lot of elements that are only mentioned in the book in this. I was pouring over the book and the script book to make sure I got details right.
> 
> I was inspired by Madame Tracy's line, "He's right you know. I'd be able to tell if he was lying." If she is able to tell if Aziraphale's lying it would make sense that she'd be able to feel even more of his emotions. Since we all know our boys don't talk feelings.

Aziraphale was not having a particularly good day. Any other time he would have enjoyed the events that preceded his current situation. Visiting Australia and Haiti again was pleasant and then being on TV in America! Oh, Aziraphale could hardly believe that had happened. He was still a little flustered over the host claiming that he was being possessed by a demon. The nerve of that man! Aziraphale was far from a demon, the exact opposite if he’s being precise. Then, he really could have gone without being discorporated in the first place. No matter how nice seeing some of the world again had been. He hadn’t been able to finish telling Crowley about the airbase in Tadfield and the boy Adam Young because of all the losing his body business.

Finding a new body was always such a chore. Aziraphale never quite knew where he was until he found a compatible host and got them to answer him. There tended to be a lot of confusion and yelling before and answer came. Normally, he would have gone back to Heaven, filled out the mounds of paperwork, and wait until he was issued a new one. But today, that was out of the question. It was Saturday, the Very Last Day of the Rest of their Lives. The hosts of Heaven and Hell were currently waiting for the Antichrist to arrive at the designated area and the long prophesied war between the two parties would begin. It was the war that he and Crowley had been working on trying to prevent, mind you.

It took time, more time than he would have liked, but Aziraphale had managed to find a compatible body in England. In London even! Aziraphale’s current body, the lovely Madame Tracy, accompanied by the root cause of his problem, Sergeant Shadwell, were on their way to Mayfair as fast as Madame Tracy’s scooter would go. Which was approximately 5 miles per hour with the two physical bodies aboard. Aziraphale would have preferred to go straight to Tadfield but as soon as Madame Tracy started driving he knew they would not get there fast enough. Besides, he still had to tell Crowley about Adam Young, and once he told him they could take the Bentley. Azirphale knew Crowley’s driving well enough by now to know that they would get there with time to spare. His only hope was that Crowley would be home. The demon had been busy when he tried to call him earlier. Azirphale sensed trouble as soon as the demon has picked up the phone and uttered his first “ngk”. It had been bothering him since the phone call.

Madame Tracy’s scooter pulled up to the front of Crowley’s apartment complex with a soft _putputputput_. Sergeant Shadwell all but fell off of the scooter in his haste to be on solid ground, face as grey as the concrete, while Madam Tracy carefully took off her pink helmet.

“_We really must hurry my dear lady. Armageddon’s right around the corner and it won’t wait while we dither about," _Aziraphale said as Madame Tracy primped her hair after putting the helmet on the seat of her scooter.

“And you’re sure your friend, will take us to Tadfield?” Asked Madame Tracy as her feet took her, quite quickly, towards the entrance of the complex.

_“I assure you he will.”_

“How will he get through the traffic? It is dreadfully jammed, as you saw on the way here. My scooter barely fit between the cars!”

_"Oh, you needn’t worry about that. He has his…ways.”_

“I don’t care what ‘e drives. Anythin’ is better than that blasted contraption we ‘ust rode ‘ere on,” Shadwell said following behind Madame Tracy.

Madame Tracy giggled while teasing Shadwell as the two of them entered the lift. She pushed the button to Crowley’s floor setting the elevator into motion. With a _ding_ the lift came to a stop and Madame Tracy was making her way down the hall before the doors had the chance to finish opening. Shadwell tripped in his haste to keep up with the woman. He may not be the brightest, but he was quite sure it wasn’t Madame Tracy in control of the body. It had to be the Southern Pansy. He hadn’t seen the woman move this fast since she was first starting advertising for “Intimate Personal Relaxation and Stress Relief for the Discerning Gentleman” decades ago. Shadwell had been glad when her knees stopped being what they used to be. It meant fewer phone calls and a quieter hallway.

The two came to a stop in front of Crowley’s door. It was slightly ajar. Shadwell looked around waiting for something to happen. "Is this it?"

_“Yes, this is it.”_

“Why aren’t we going in? The door appears to be open," Madame Tracy asked.

_“That would be the problem dear lady. You see, Crowley would never just leave his door open. He’s too private for that,” _Aziraphale said, slowly pushing the door open the rest of the way and peeking inside.

“Maybe he was expecting you. You did say you called, correct?”

_“Yes, but I didn’t say I was going to stop by,”_ Aziraphale answered, entering the flat.

Something was off. Aziraphale could feel it. There was a slight buzz in the back of his head the further into the flat he got. It was a familiar buzz. Similar to the buzzing he felt when he goes back to Heaven to give a report, but at a much smaller scale.

Aziraphale called out for Crowley, but only silence answered. Crowley’s flat wasn’t particularly large. It was larger than a standard flat, because that’s what Crowley expected of it, but even with the extra space, he would have heard Aziraphale calling for him.

Aziraphale entered the lounge after checking the kitchen, bedroom and toilet. Crowley only had five rooms in the flat. The buzzing in the back of his head was getting louder and harder to ignore. There was only one thing that the buzzing could be, Holiness.

_“That doesn’t make any sense,” _Aziraphale muttered out loud. _“Crowley wouldn’t have anything holy in his apartment except…”_

Aziraphale’s eyes landed on the sketch of the Mona Lisa. The sketch was on the floor, leaning against the wall. In the place the sketch should have been was an open safe, an empty open safe that should have been holding an important item that Aziraphale had given to Crowley himself in back in 1967.

_“It’s gone,”_ Aziraphale said, taking a step back.

“What’s gone?” Shadwell asked, squinting at the safe.

Aziraphale didn’t answer. Instead, he turned and rushed to the office, the last room he hadn’t checked. Madame Tracy’s poor heart was hammering in her chest at a speed that was most definitely not healthy for a woman of her age.

_“Crowley! My dear, you better be in-“ _Aziraphale started, but came to a sudden stop in the doorway, looking at the ground. A small gasp escaped his lips that could have been mistaken for the word ‘no’.

“An’ what are we lookin’ at exactly?” Shadwell asked, peering around Madame Tracy into the office. The office looked clean to Shadwell’s standards. There was a wet spot on the floor by the desk with the head of a plant mister on the floor next to it. Nothing else in the room looked out of place, so Shadwell turned his attention to what Madame Tracy or the Southern Pansy was looking at. Immediately, he scrunched up his nose. What lay before them in a scorch mark on the carpet was a glistening glob of mashed slug looking things with a bucket not too far away. Now that was definitely out of place in the otherwise spotless room.

He turned to Madame Tracy to comment on the disgusting puddle, but instead said, “What ye cryin’ ‘bout wumman? Is jus’ slugs.”

Madame Tracy jumped slightly. Touching her cheeks as if she didn’t know they were wet. She looked at Shadwell, but felt her eyes move back to stare wide-eyed at the mess on the carpet, then to the bucket. “I-I don’t really know Mr. Shadwell…I’m just…overwhelmed with a feeling of sorrow. L-like I just lost something…or someone...”

Shadwell balked as Madame Tracy moved a hand over her chest and clutched at the fabric there as it if was the only thing keeping her grounded. Slowly, she took as step over the scorch mark into the office and looked around as if to make sure the office was truly empty. Turning back to the scorch mark she crouched down and reached out with a shaking hand over the puddle. Her hand hovered over the goo before being pulled back as she quickly stood up.

_“Come, there’s no time to waste,”_ Aziraphale said in a clipped tone, briskly leaving the room.

“What? I thought we came ‘ere to get yer friend,” Shadwell said.

_“Unfortunately they are no longer…available,”_ Aziraphale said. If anyone noticed his voice crack on the last word nobody mentioned it.

“Available? He wasn’t even ‘ere to tell us he’s not. Why not jus' call ‘im again?” Shadwell asked as Madame Tracy ushered him into the elevator. The last thing Shadwell wanted to do was get back on the blasted contraption she called a vehicle.

“Mr. Shadwell!” Madame Tracy scolded. “You are going to listen to Mr. Aziraphale. If he says we’re leaving, we’re leaving. Come on now, we have an Armageddon to stop.”

The elevator reached the ground floor and the two hurried out to the scooter. Once they were situated, with the Thundergun in its place between Shadwell and Madame Tracy they were on their way. With a quick miracle, the scooter was soaring through the sky surrounded by a deep blue nimbus going no more than two hundred miles an hour.

Silence surrounded the small party as they flew. While Aziraphale was able to put himself together on the outside Madame Tracy could tell that something was still amiss. The tears may have stopped, but the pain in her chest was still there. It clamped around her heart and made it hard to breathe.

Underneath the pain, there was something else. If she had asked she would have discovered that Aziraphale felt betrayed. He was angry. He was cursing Crowley, and the ineffable plan, and Above, and Below. It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. He had been assured that the holy water was just insurance, in the event that everything went pear-shaped, that it wouldn’t be used as a suicide pill. But the scorch mark in the office was hard to mistake. It was surrounded by holiness and then glistening glob in the middle was in fact not mashed slugs, but the remains of a demon. Aziraphale knew the scene well. He’d had to clean up his fair share of baptized demons back when the human churches were more active. 

Crowley had promised him and he had been a fool of an angel who had decided to believe and trust a demon.

The anger was a mask though. Underneath the anger there was a little seed of fear, a thought, that Aziraphale was scared to entertain. Crowley had been talking as he answered the phone. He hadn’t been alone when Aziraphale had called. There was a chance that Crowley’s plan had gone terribly, horribly awry after Aziraphale hung up. That the insurance had backfired on him and whoever had been in the office with him had managed to use the holy water against him. That thought was more terrifying to Aziraphale than thinking Crowley had used it on himself. It was easier to be angry, to be mad that someone had betrayed your trust. It didn’t hurt as much. Knowing that the gift you had given to protect someone dear to you had inadvertently caused their death. Aziraphale couldn’t bear to think about it, so he refused too. There was an Armageddon he needed to stop after all.

Over the flaming ring that was the M25 and through the storm of raining fish they went, reaching Tadfield in record time. A kind gentleman directed them to the airfield and Adam Young, and there they were, arguing with the American guard about why they needed to enter the airbase.

_"It really is vitally important that we are allowed to speak to whoever is in charge,”_ said Aziraphale. _“I really must ask that_ he’s right, you know, I’d be able to tell if he was lying _yes, thank you, I think we’d really achieve something if you kindly allowed me to carry on_ all right _thank you_ I was trying to put in a good word _Yes! Er._ You were asking him to _yes,_ _all right…now_-“ 

Shadwell decided, then, it was his turn to threaten the American guard with his finger, claiming that it would send the guard to meet the Maker. Aziraphale and Madame Tracy sighed. One of them put her head in a hand and slowly shook it. Now as not the time for one of Shadwell’s episodes, once he started there was no way of stopping him. The world was ending, the pain in Madame Tracy’s chest wouldn’t go away if anything it was stronger than before, and if Shadwell kept shoving his finger in the guard's face there was absolutely no way they’d be able to get into the airbase.

_Pinging_ noises coming from behind her caused Madame Tracy to turn around and look at the car that just pulled up. The wheels were gone, along with the paintwork and it was billowing blue smoke. It looked as if it had smoked glass windows, but that was just an effect caused by it having ordinary glass windows but a smoke-filled interior.

The driver’s door opened and a cloud of choking fumes got out. Followed shortly by-

"_Crowley?”_ Aziraphale breathed, so quietly that only Madame Tracy knew it had been said.

“Hi,” Crowley said. “How’s it going? Has the world ended yet?”

"_He won’t let us in, Crowley.” _

“Aziraphale? Is that you? Nice dress,” Crowley said, patting the Bentley.

While the conversation continued on about Armageddon and the car that apparently used to be a Bentley, Madame Tracy could feel a change in her. The tightness that had claimed her heart when they saw that puddle in the office in Mayfair and the anger that had taken hold on the flight to Tadfield had disappeared. It was replaced with relief and a stronger, lighter feeling directed towards the man that showed up in the burning car, the man that currently stared at her in fascination.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your new body?” Crowley asked.

"_Oh? Yes. Yes, of course. Madame Tracy, this is Crowley. Crowley, Madame Tracy.”_

“Charmed I’m sure,” Madame Tracy said, she felt her heart quicken, but it wasn’t because of anything she was feeling.

“Let’s get on in,” Crowley said, turning towards the gates.

The guard had disappeared and the gates had opened during the time Madame Tracy was mulling about the changes in her chest. As she watched a Jeep pull up full of American soldiers and Crowley lift his arms into the air like Bruce Lee and smile Lee van Clef style, Madame Tracy felt the corner of her own lips quirk up in a fond smile.

Ah! She finally placed what the new overwhelming feeling was.

Love.

It was the angel's love.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! <3
> 
> If you want to yell at me about Good Omens you can find me on tumblr at hey--its--jess.


End file.
